Toxin
by ncfan
Summary: Ange gives up. /Spoilers for EP4./


I own nothing.

* * *

She's known for a while, you see. She's known it from the start. This must have all been a delusion, and she's been pathetic for indulging it. Ushiromiya Ange is pathetic for a lot of reasons, as her kindly classmates point out to her, again and again and again, just as they have for the past nine hours, when the sun was still high in the sky.

"Hey, aren't you listening to us?!"

(Hey, aren't you listening to me?)

"God, I don't think I could go on if I was as pathetic as you!"

(What good is furniture that can't carry out their master's commands? I don't think I could go on if I was that pathetic.)

"It ought to be easy for you, Ushiromiya-san! Why do you insist on making thing so difficult for us?! What's wrong with you?! Can't you be cooperative for just one minute?!"

(It ought to be easy for furniture such as you. Why can't you do it? What's wrong with you? Can't you listen to me for one minute?!)

"Why don't you just shrivel up and die, then?!"

(If you can't kill them, then die! Just die, all of you!)

Lucifer goes first, writhing on the floor. Ange's kindly classmates, so intent on their lesson, do not notice. She shatters on the floor. She has broken like glass, like she was a glass ornament. She shatters into a million pieces, glittering like diamonds or ice crystals in the sun, and Ange's ever-patient classmates, truly fixed on teaching their useless classmate the meaning of regret and repentance, step on what's left of her, and notice nothing. There could be a whole world burning beneath their feet, and they would notice nothing.

Then goes Leviathan. The ever-envious second sister, given the opportunity to shine, shrinks back from her task, and she shatters like Lucifer, disobedient furniture, proven to be nothing more than a figment of Ange's mind.

(Blow away like smoke. That's what you all are, after all. Smoke and mirrors. Blow away like smoke.)

"Seriously, what's wrong with you?! Don't you have any dreams at all?! Shouldn't you be working hard to accomplish them?!"

(What was I doing, all this time? Resurrection of the dead? What a joke! I could laugh at myself, I'm so stupid!)

Imaginary Satan goes the way of her imaginary sisters. Imaginary Belphegor gives empty words of useless consolation, and breaks. (I don't need your platitudes! I need these girls' blood at my feet!)

Asmodeus and Beelzebub cower at their feet, clutching at each other. (You are sad and empty. Not one of you can touch reality. I see that now. Not one of you can lay one finger on these girls, because not one of you exist. It's all so clear to me now. How could I have missed it?)

"Die, you useless creep! Why are you even alive?! Why are you alive when you're so worthless?!"

(Die you useless furniture! Why are you guys even alive?! Why are you even alive when your lives are worthless?! You are made of nothing! If you die, it's nothing! Die! Die now!)

Mammon screams at her to stop –Please stop, Ange-sama!— and for one moment, one desperate moment, Ange feels her heart calm, her pulse stop its racing. For one last moment, she surmounts the hill of hope. (Surely you, my faithful friend, surely you will be able to succeed where your useless sisters have failed.)

More platitudes.

–As you are now, it is impossible for you.—

–Even if you use us, you are incapable of murder.—

–Furniture can only go so far as their masters can go.—

Ange can hear nothing beyond that.

"We're asking you to do it because we all need to pull our weight! What is so hard to understand about that?!"

(I'm asking you too because I can't do it myself! What is so hard to understand about that?!)

Nothing Mammon says can reach her. Just another illusion, another pathetic creature conjured up to mask the pathetic truth of the pathetic life of a pathetic girl.

(I've known since the beginning! None of you are real! I haven't had a single friend from the beginning! You're just a phantom I conjured up! I've known that since the beginning!)

She doesn't even bother to deny it.

–Kill me, deny me, your first and final friend!—

Ange didn't know illusions without a soul could cry, but Mammon does as she hardens, grows brittle, totters, and falls to the floor. She shatters, glass flying everywhere, and a wellspring of bitter water splashes over the floor, over the shoes of Ange's long-suffering classmates, over the shattered remains of her sisters.

With one fell stroke, with no remorse in her heart, Ange does the rest. She banishes her dead cousin, and her dead cousin's dead toy. (Witches? What are Witches? They're delusions, just like the seven I killed right here, right now. You two are just the same. Maria onee-chan, you're dead. Sakutaro is just a delusion you created to distract yourself from your loneliness. I couldn't care less about Witches, or that stupid alliance you keep talking about. Witches don't exist. Magic doesn't exist. You're both dead. Stay dead.)

"Die and stay dead!"

Sakutaro shatters, his glass fingers clinging to her dead cousin's skirt. Her dead cousin screams abuse at her, just like everyone else does, tears streaming down her dead face, and vanishes, leaving Ange staring into the jeering faces of her long-suffering, exasperated classmates.

She has a faint image of herself as a girl, giggling unkindly at her crying cousin as she held a stuffed toy to her chest. Ange pushes it away.

That's it. Goodbye dreams. Goodbye dead family. Goodbye, illusions. Ange knows what she's left with now. A pile of corpses and a crime that needs to be solved. That's all she was left with from the beginning. Ange's blood runs boiling hot for a moment, before it cools, and slows, and runs sluggishly through her veins like sludge. Everything she built herself up with, everything she saw, everything she thought was real, she pushes it out, and leaves herself empty, filled only with sludge, with an unforgiving hardness, the foulest of anti-magic toxins.

She is Ushiromiya Ange.

She is empty, and will remain empty. She has too, if she wants to fill herself with truth instead of daydreams and talk of magic. Magic just doesn't exist. All that exists is this classroom, and the hate-filled eyes of her classmates. She really has been such a disgrace, and they smile, relieved that she finally gets it, as she admits her sins, but stop smiling as she begs for death. It must not have been what they were expecting.

"Why haven't I died?" she asks, staring around the room, so detached that she might as well be asking about tomorrow's weather. "I believe one of you asked me about that earlier. I think that they were right, which ever one of you it was. Why didn't I die, all those years ago?" she asks them casually. Her patient classmates stare into her eyes, stunned and silent. "If you can't answer me, I think I know what it is. Someone, one of you, any of you, please…" She swallows, starts to feel hot tears course down her cheeks. But inside, she is hollow, detached still. There is no more room in her for that emotion, it seems. Not sorrow, and not love, of life or anything. "Please just let me die."

But no one does. Daydreams can't kill, and humans can't either.

So is this a daydream too?

That's it, then.

The girls, her stunned classmates, stare at her, dumbfounded. It must really not have been what they were expecting at all. Well, it wasn't what Ange was expecting either. None of this was anything like what she expected at all.

A teacher comes, trying to protect her, but really, he's too late, and Ange might feel a little something come back into her, but she can't separate him from them, or what she just threw away. But she does learn a lesson. Humans are the only ones who can save her. Not illusions made of smoke and mirrors.

She pushes her way out of the room, and away from prying eyes, her shoulders sag and her knees wobble, but Ange doesn't notice it, and she stays empty. Ushiromiya Ange must stay empty of all but bitter sludge, if she ever wants to fill herself with truth.


End file.
